Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
PROVO — By most accounts, when the BYU men’s soccer team opened its Premier Development League campaign at Real Colorado Foxes, Cougar midfielder Jace Green didn’t have his best game.
He made up for it Friday night.
Green scored two goals, both in the first half, as BYU earned a point in its league home opener against the Foxes at South Field in Provo.
“I don’t know if Jace would want me to say this, but he had probably his worst game when we played them at their place,” BYU coach Chris Watkins said candidly. “We subbed him out pretty early, and physically he was just getting run over.
“He was committed tonight to make sure he was around to score goals tonight, fighting for the ball. He’s a finesse player, but he bounced back nice tonight.”
Green opened the scoring in the 12th minute of the match, latching on to Pedro Vasconcelos’ cross into the six-yard box and slamming home a goal with his head to put the Cougars (0-2-2) up, 1-0.
But the Foxes (1-1-2) didn’t let the lead hold up for long. Danny Arrubla drew a penalty kick en route to the BYU goal in the 22nd minute, and Colorado captain Jeff Jennings stepped up to bury the spot kick inside the left post and past a diving Brenden Ottman.
After Colorado’s Miguel Jaime had a goal waived offside, Winston Sorhaitz launched a counterattack at the other end, and Green only needed one touch for his second goal of the night in the 29th minute.
“We wanted to play together, and we didn’t want to be so stretched,” Watkins said. “We did a good job of that for 75 minutes tonight.
“Tonight, we worked well as a group and stayed together pretty well.”
Arrubla tied the game against just four minutes before halftime as Ottman ran off his line and to the edge of the box trying to defend a one-on-one situation. But the shifty forward for the Foxes chipped the ball over Ottman, caught it on the other side of the goalkeeper, and tapped it over the line for an easy goal and a 2-2 halftime score.
Ottman made five saves on 13 shots faced, and Colorado goalkeeper Miguel Rosales made three saves while facing 15 shots, though only five of them were on frame.
Josh Hunter, who entered for Green midway through the second half, had the best chance at a game-winner for either side with an attempt in stoppage time. Hunter took one of his two shots of the game in the second minute of stoppage, nutmegging a defender and blistering a shot from distance that Rosales punched over the crossbar as the Foxes held on for a draw.
It wasn’t a perfect game, but for a young squad that returned only four starters from a year ago, Watkins will take the improvement.
“I think we can relax now. We gave a lot of people some minutes tonight, and we’ve only played three games this season,” Watkins said. “These minutes are really valuable for us right now. We’ve got a lot of new guys on the field, and they did pretty well tonight.”
BYU and Real Colorado will play their third of four games this season at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at South Field.
